Äldste Nathan Sirrine: August 27, 2018 Let the Spirit Guide

Stockholm!

On Tuesday I got to go on exchanges with Elder Ahonen, who comes from Finland! He is only one of two non-American elders in the mission, so it was pretty cool to get to talk to him about what it's like to grow up in Scandinavia. I've also discovered that he's really good at innebandy (floor hockey),

Splits with Elder Ahonen

because it's such a popular sport here, so you definitely want him on your team if your going to play. He's been out a year now, and funny enough, his Swedish actually has an American accent... Looks like he's been hanging out with us a little too long :)

This week we had several experiences that confirmed for me just how willing God is to guide our path. It's something I've seen many times before, but every time I get to the end of the day and think about what happened that day, I realize that there is absolutely no way it could be by chance or any amount of human planning.

One example of such guidance we received this week was on Thursday as we were traveling on the train to visit several people that evening. We realized we didn't have time to visit them all, so we prayed and listened for the guidance of the spirit. It finally came as a small prompting, just a subtle feeling, that we should visit Jeremie and Daisy, a couple who was baptized in January. We didn't have anything official set up, we were just swinging by, so Jeremie was completely shocked when we knocked on the door and he opened. Jeremie was the only one home, but he invited us in and we shared a short message about prayer with him. He shared with us that they had been on vacation and unable to attend church on Sunday, so he wanted us to come by for a spiritual boost, but had been too busy to give us a call, and couldn't believe that we had shown up anyway. He continued on to tell us that just that morning he had had a miraculous answer to his prayers, and was even more amazed that our message was about exactly that. As we talked with each other, we came to understand why we had received the prompting and how the spirit had spoken to us. As we learn in the scriptures, the spirit is a still, small voice that will press just firmly enough for us to hear if we pay it heed. We may not know why we receive the promptings we do, but as Moroni teaches us, we receive a witness after the trial of our faith. As we act on promptings in faith, the Lord will go before us and prepare our way so that all things might work together for our good.

Äldste Sirrine